Jan
6
“Twelve people were detained including those transporting the merchandise, who were Spanish, and the sellers and buyers of the drugs who were Dutch and British respectively”.
It is the largest seizure in the region for 17 years, police said.
Spanish National Police uncovered the haul of Class A drugs, which had apparently been trafficked from South America to Spain and were destined for the United Kingdom, after a tip off from the National Crime Agency (NCA).
On November 12, a Briton considered one of the biggest drug traffickers in Europe, Robert Dawes, was arrested in his luxurious villa of a seaside resort in the province of Malaga in Andalusia, and then imprisoned in France.
The rest of the drugs were found disguised in the form of wooden pallets in an industrial warehouse in Pontevedra, in Galicia.
Five men from Liverpool, aged between 31 and 59, a 50-year-old man from Gloucestershire, two Dutch men and two Spaniards have also been detained.
Galician drug barons first opened routes into Spain via the region with the Colombian Cali and Medellin cartels in the 1980s.
As well as the drugs, police also seized almost £900,000 in euros as well as the pistol, four cars and a motorbike.
Galicia, a coastal region, has always been used by drug traffickers for carrying narcotics to Europe.
In December, police seized 1.4 tonnes of cocaine from Colombia that was compressed to make it look like wood. He was suspected of involvement in such imports on a flight from Caracas to Paris, of 1.3 tons of cocaine seized at Roissy airport in 2013.
The Costa del Sol, once dubbed the “Costa del Crime” for the large number of British criminals who sought sanctuary there in the 1970s and 1980s, is still a popular location for criminals from Britain and around Europe.
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